Professor Brent Stockwell

Healthy Fats Improve Heart Health (For Some People)

But knowing which fats are best is a challenge. New research brings clarity.

Cindy Cao and Brent R. Stockwell co-authored this article

New research has revealed which fats are best, and why. Fish fats such as EPA (short for eicosapentaenoic acid) prevent heart disease. An important new study published in the scientific journal Nature Metabolism finds that EPA activates the protein S1PR1 (sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 1), explaining why some people respond better than others to health-promoting fats such as EPA — people have different versions of S1PR1 that can affect how they respond to EPA.

People respond differently to what they eat, including when it comes to consuming fats. That’s because there are a variety of fats — some help and some hurt health, and what they do can be different in different people.

Pop star Jennifer Lopez and Princess of Wales Kate Middleton both followed a diet low in fat to lose weight. Former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, on the other hand, eats a diet rich in fish and healthy fats. Who is right?

In a separate study, researchers in Canada reported in the medical journal The Lancet that people who eat a low fat diet die sooner than those who don’t, suggesting that some fat is crucial for health.

In diet culture, fat has been posed as something harmful. The low-fat diet created by American physician Dean Ornish, M.D., for example, seeks to minimize fat consumption. With the keto diet and low fat diet gaining in popularity, it’s difficult to know what kind of fat to eat, and how much.

Why you need fat

“I love to eat everything and you pretty much can,” said Jennifer Lopez, “A little piece of something fattening is not going to kill you”. That’s a reasonable way of thinking about it, but knowing which fats to eat is key to good health, since not all fats are equal in nutritional and health-promoting value.

Dietary fats help build cells, provide energy, protect organs, absorb vitamins from food, and make hormones. There are saturated and unsaturated fats: Saturated fats are solid at room temperature, while unsaturated fats are liquid.

Essential fats called polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) protect from diseases like cancer, bone problems, autoimmune disorders, and heart damage. The two main classes of PUFAs, omega-3 and omega-6, are both essential, since your body cannot make them in sufficient amounts. You need to get them from your diet.

The fat EPA relaxes blood vessels

Omega-3 fats are essential for people, as much as water and oxygen are. One of these key fats is EPA, found in fish. Some people respond to EPA while others don’t.

While these benefits have been known for some time, the way EPA affects the body to promote health hasn’t been clear. The study in Nature Metabolism found that EPA works by interacting with the protein S1PR1 in the cells that line blood vessels. This protein causes the gas nitric oxide to be produced, relaxing blood vessels and preventing blockages in arteries that can damage the heart.

Mice lacking S1PR1 don’t benefit from EPA the way other mice do. People lacking S1PR1 might also not benefit, and could explain the variable effect of EPA in people.

The authors of this study suggest that drugs could be designed to activate S1PR1 more effectively than EPA, further benefiting many people.

Understanding how food affects the body may help address diseases related to diet. Since the beginning of the Agricultural Revolution, and over the last 10,000 years, diets have changed substantially, while genes have not. Especially in the last 100 years, rapid changes to what we eat — particularly in Western countries — has increased obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, as well as different types of cancers.

Westerners now consume more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 fatty acids, and these two classes of PUFAs have opposing effects on many functions in the body.

The right fat for your diet

Diets high in omega-6 PUFAs are associated with inflammation, constriction of blood vessels, and platelet aggregation, whereas diets high in omega−3 PUFAs, including EPA, reduce inflammation and the risk of cancer and heart disease. A balanced ratio of these PUFAs is important for health.

There are dietary sources that supplement the Western diet to allow for a better ratio of these two types of essential fats. Research published in the journal eLife showed that adults with higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids have lower mortality risks compared to those with lower levels of omega-3 in blood.

There are three main omega-3 fatty acids:

• alpha-linolenic acid (ALA)
• eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA)
• docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)

ALA is found in plant oils, such as flaxseed, soy, and canola. DHA and EPA are found in seafood, including fatty fish.

The human body can convert a little ALA into EPA, then EPA to DHA, but in such small amounts that getting EPA and DHA directly from food is crucial to maintain levels of these critical omega-3 fatty acids in your body.

There is no widely agreed-upon recommendation for the minimum amount of EPA humans should consume. It is often suggested that the daily intake of EPA for adults should be at least 220 mg per day. In the diet, this would be 2 or 3 servings of fatty fish each week.

Adults should eat two servings of fish, including cold-water fatty fish, such as salmon, mackerel, tuna, herring, or sardines, per week. The National Institutes of Health suggests a combined daily PUFA intake of 1.1 grams for adult women and 1.6 grams for adult men, which would be even more daily consumption of fish. However, deep sea fish such as swordfish and tuna have high levels of mercury, so intake of those should be limited.

For those on vegetarian and vegan diets, alternative sources of dietary omega-3s are found in flaxseed, walnut, and algal oil.

Nuts and seeds are generally a good source of omega-3s. A handful of walnuts (about 30 grams or 10 walnuts) contains 1.9 g of the omega-3 ALA, which meets the daily recommendation of ALA to prevent heart disease.

Other vegetarian sources of omega-3s (ALA specific) are (keeping in mind the daily recommended intake of ALA in adults ranges from 1100 mg-1600 mg):

• Chia seeds (15g serving = 2,685 mg ALA)
• Walnuts (30g serving = 1,884 mg ALA)
• Canola oil (1 tbs serving = 1,820 mg ALA)
• Soybean oil (1 tbs serving = 1,434 mg ALA)
• Flaxseeds (1 tsp serving = 922 mg ALA)

The bottom is that not all fats are detrimental, and some such as EPA are essential for good health. Finding sources of these good fats are critical for a long and healthy life. Eating EPA-rich foods in particular, such as salmon, on a weekly basis is important for heart health for most people.

As the great Roman poet Virgil said, “The greatest wealth is health.” Eating foods that provide the right fats such as EPA each day is the key to good health and wealth.

Cindy Cao graduated from Barnard College, double majoring in Cellular Biology and English.

Brent R. Stockwell is Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University.

Healthy Fats Improve Heart Health (For Some People) was originally published in Wise & Well on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Promising Discovery Could Prevent Fatal COVID Lung Damage

Study reveals iron as a culprit, suggesting solutions that could help long COVID patients now and others in future viral pandemics

A subset of COVID patients experience severe lung damage, leading to fatalities, including 1,901 deaths worldwide over a one-month period ending in mid-May. While many organs are affected by the ever-growing number of variants that cause COVID-19, compromised lung function has been one of the most serious complications since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

New research from my lab, on human tissues and in hamsters, has shown how lungs are injured in COVID patients and how lung function can be preserved.

Meanwhile, the COVID pandemic has receded into the background noise of periodic colds, flus, and other mild illnesses, at least for many people around the world and for the media. But new variants of the virus that cause COVID-19 continue to spawn and circulate, and to cause serious and long-term debilitating illness in a subset of patients.

Just as the original SARS and MERS virus outbreaks in 2003 and 2012 receded from public discourse until the emergence of COVID-19 in 2020, a future variant or new virus may suddenly bring viral mechanisms and therapies into the world consciousness again — perhaps in 2029 if the trend continues. That’s why continuing to understand how these viruses cause damage to the body and how these health problems can be prevented remains a high priority.

Vast lung destruction during COVID

The actress Alyssa Milano is one of many people, prominent and otherwise, who were silently debilitated by the coronavirus. Milano told NBC New York that after she had COVID in 2020, she continued to experience shortness of breath, and that even two years later, her lungs had only 30% of their normal capacity.

Lung damage due to COVID makes it difficult to breathe, forcing the most severe COVID patients onto mechanical respirators to assist their breathing.

“Vast destruction of the architecture of the lungs,” is how Professor Mauro Giacca at King’s College London described the impact of COVID. Another frank assessment of the effects of COVID on the lungs by physician Howard Hang: “These lungs are not capable of sustaining life.”

Iron drives lung failure but provides a treatment

A new study from my group and our collaborators found that the lung damage during COVID is caused by activating a specific form of cell death driven by iron accumulation in cells of the lung. This type of cell death is known as ferroptosis, from the Latin ”ferrum” for iron combined with the suffix -ptosis, derived from the Greek word for falling away and for cell death processes.

We found that iron accumulates in lung cells and activates ferroptosis, leading to lung destruction and impaired breathing capacity. We found evidence of ferroptosis both in lung samples from patients who died of severe COVID and in a hamster model of COVID infection.

Ferroptosis can be prevented by specific treatments. Such ferroptosis-blocking drugs prevented lung damage in a hamster model of COVID — this suggests that people with COVID and similar viral infections could benefit from these drugs in the future. We also found that olive oil can prevent ferroptosis in cells and in mice in some cases, indicating that future research could examine whether diets rich in olive oil protect lungs against COVID damage in people.

COVID affects other organs as well — such as the brain, heart, kidneys and blood. The health consequences in these other organs may depend on other biological processes and require other treatments, or perhaps ferroptosis may be relevant to some of these organs as well. More research is needed to determine how damage happens in each organ during COVID.

While many people may agree with the World Health Organization’s statement that the pandemic emergency is over, more study is needed to treat the 6.4% of US adults who have reported experiencing long COVID, according to the CDC, as well as future pandemic victims.

Ongoing research will benefit people suffering from long COVID today, but the work will be even more important in the likely deadly pandemics that will come in the future. Many experts have said the recent pandemic is unlikely to be the worst humanity will face, given the increasing use of industrial agriculture coupled with climate change and integration of populations through globalization.

A future pandemic could have 20 times the fatalities of COVID, according to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization. Now is the time to develop new treatments against viral infections and the damage they cause in the body, as this research takes years to lead to new therapies. Ferroptosis provides a new piece of the COVID puzzle that can help to advance effective treatments.

Promising Discovery Could Prevent Fatal COVID Lung Damage was originally published in Wise & Well on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s the Difference Between Plant and Animal Protein?

They’re different biochemical languages that profoundly affect health

Plants and animals look different, but they both contain a lot of protein. And since protein is one of the most crucial nutrients in the foods you eat, you’re wise to understand what it is, how it works, and which kind is best. Bodybuilders think they need it to build muscle. Vegans worry they don’t get enough of it. Many of us are just baffled by it.

What is protein, and is there any difference in where it comes from? Is eating plant protein and animal protein equivalent?

What we call protein in food is a mixture of thousands of different flavors of protein. These many large molecules are built from repeating units called amino acids — there are 20 common types of such amino acids. Each type of protein has a unique sequence of amino acids strung together, like letters that form words and sentences.

Let’s make a simple analogy: Sentences in English can make very different use of the letters of the alphabet. The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter once, and efficiently too. “An assassin sins” is a phrase that uses only four different letters. If you ate one, each could have very different effects on your body.

But since you don’t typically eat your words (or at least hope not to) here’s some relevant advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” from writer Michael Pollan. So, then, what’s the real difference in plant and animal protein when we eat them?

Protein letters have different effects on health

When you eat foods with protein, your stomach digests it into individual amino acids, breaking the protein words down into single letters. The amino acid letters are reused by different parts of the body to build new protein words and sentences.

Some of the amino acids from the protein you eat get converted into energy, or into other molecules your body can use. The specific amino acids in the protein you eat have a dramatic effect on what happens to your body after you eat — how the whole story of your health turns out. So why don’t we eat the protein sources that are best for our health?

“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon,” suggested Doug Larson, newspaper columnist.

Plant and animal proteins use letters differently

The alphabet that is used to write both animal and plant proteins is the same set of 20 amino acids. The amino acids are the different letters. A particular protein can be like the word banana that uses more of the letter A, while another protein might be like the word beekeeper that has a lot Es, and an exotic protein might be built from an unusually large number of Ms, such as mammogram.

Plants and animals build their proteins differently, just as words are built differently in Spanish and English. The proteins from plants and animals contain different amounts of each amino acid letter. Plant proteins tend to have more of the amino acids that benefit health, whereas animal proteins often have more of the amino acids harmful to health. The protein in foods we eat thus have different amino acid compositions, which in turn affect health in positive and negative ways.

But different plants themselves use different proteins. Soy, made from soybeans, uses most of the 20 amino acid letters, whereas corn and rice only use a subset of the amino acid letters in their proteins, even though they function fine as plants. This is impressive — like writing an entire book without using seven letters of the alphabet.

The deadliest letter

So which amino acids are good and which are bad? The most dangerous amino acid seems to be methionine. Mice on a diet high in methionine develop anxiety, and have increased risk of heart disease. Eating foods with less methionine slows aging and promotes health. And yes, plants have less methionine than animals. Pork, chicken, and beef are high in methionine. Fruits, mushrooms, and broccoli are low in methionine. One slice of cured ham has the same methionine content as 1,100 apples.

The bottom line: Plant and animal proteins are built from amino acids, but in different proportions. The way we digest and metabolize these different amino acids affects health. Proteins vary tremendously in size and composition. The littlest are under fifty letters, like this sentence. The longest are more than 34,000 letters, about seven times as many as in this entire story.

There is still a vast amount of science to be unraveled about how different amino acids affect the many aspects of health. Understanding that dietary proteins are not interchangeable is the first step to decoding the precise impact of the protein we eat on our well-being.

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What’s the Difference Between Plant and Animal Protein? was originally published in Aha! Science on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.